ecoculture, geophilosophy, mediapolitics

Belief in expired wor(l)ds, & in wor(l)ds to come…

It riles me up when intelligent people whose work I respect a lot say ill-considered, if not outright indefensible, things. Jodi Dean’s post arguing that communism “worked” strikes me as such a thing. I’ve provided a lengthy counter-argument on her blog, the gist of which is that the political projects that were actually carried out (rather than merely dreamed) under the flag of “communism” were colossal failures, for a whole host of reasons. This is thoroughly documented, and anyone who has spent much time in the former Soviet Union, or I imagine in China, has encountered the many levels of failure: social, economic, ecological, and, perhaps most disturbingly, a kind of deep spiritual failure.

Gilles Deleuze argues that what we need are artistic and philosophical experiments that would revive our belief in this world. (That’s what this blog has argued since its inception.) While the Soviet experiment did produce such a belief in its earliest stages — and these are worth learning from — it lost it rapidly and decisively. Whether we date that loss to the long slow decline after Khrushchev, or to Stalin’s ascent and totalitarian takeover in the 1920s (and the killing fields that followed), or to the suppression of leftist dissent (such as the Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921, or others even earlier), is all a matter for debate.

But ultimately the Soviet experiment produced the very opposite of “belief in this world”: it deadened hopes and values to the extent that most people subsisted (spiritually) by carving out a little bit of personal/interpersonal space for trusted friends, but not much else. Many recognized that the ideology was dead but that they had to pledge allegiance to it just to survive. Many resorted to alcoholism (the legacy of which is alive and well today). By the end there were very few “believers” left. Those who knew how to work the system for their own ends became the new capitalist elites once that switch was flipped.

There remain a minority of Soviet believers, mostly elderly retirees and war veterans who sacrificed themselves for the system and are aghast at what little they have been left with. But the idea of reviving Communism, in the places where it was actually tried, is a dead idea, an expired word and world.

Belief itself has not expired: religion, nationalism, and consumerism have stepped into the vacuum, awakening belief where communist/socialist beliefs had exhausted themselves. But belief in this world and in its powers and possibilities — belief in genuine political change, in the power of people to build a world that responds to their needs and desires and that melds with the larger, multigenerational and more-than-human world, an immanent belief as opposed to one yoked to transcendent signifiers of one kind or another — is scarcely to be found in the former USSR. It does arise occasionally (as during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine) — in fact, it rises up through the cracks everywhere, flowering in the most unexpected places — but these blooms have little to do with what for 70 years was called Communism.

I appreciate the efforts of those who try to re-yoke the meaning of “communism” to the possibilities of “the commons” — a tradition that would link across a long and vital beatnik history, from Gerald Winstanley’s Diggers to today’s technotopian commonwealthers (who span the spectrum from the libertarians at Wired magazine to Hardt and Negri’s imagined multitudes). But “communism,” in this country and in others, contains so many cobwebs. The very term is too fixed in the dipolar Cold War world in which the possibilities of the Left were tightly circumscribed, paralyzed by the glow of the headlights of the Soviet (and/or Chinese) ship of state. Let’s celebrate the sinking of that ship and move on into the future.

The fact that capitalism is failing in all the same ways — social, ecological, economic, and spiritual — in no way means that Communism, as it was tried, did not fail. What it means is that we still have to invent a world that works (and words to go along with it), and that the models of the past are insufficient.

Adrian I appreciate the longer response. And of course the word communism is burdened with a dark history, but I still maintain that within the American context it is unavoidable. Even trying to describe what is happening to public sector employees brings out issues of class, and then that brings up “class warfare,” and ultimately communism. Collective response to social problems is a communal response – this is simply a fact. Engaging in discussions where you propose such solutions brings up communism – whether past, present or future.

Your response is admirably measured. My roots and sensibilities are very firmly in the anti-authoritarian left and nostalgia and apologetics for brutal authoritarianism in the name of “communism” sickens me. There is, of course, much shallow anti-communism/anti-socialism in the US. But, as you say, the historical record is clear, and the economic logic of centralized command economies is hopeless. Much better, I think, to fight for economic democracy
(http://books.google.com/books?id=KWy9JbWvjywC&dq=after+capitalism&source=gbs_navlinks_s)

Thanks for those comments and the links to your work, Conrad (the Blog Theory review) and MDM (After Capitalism, which looks very interesting – I’ve heard arguments for economic democracy before, but never as well developed as I would like, so I’m keen to have a closer look at the book).

Alain – I agree that words like communal, collective, et al, carry important meanings and sentiments. I think there’s a broad palette of words we can choose from, however (e.g., cooperative, social, socialist, progressive, egalitarian, anti-authoritarian, anarchist, solidarity, feminism, and many others), and we do need to be aware of the ways each of these terms plays itself out in particular contexts. I’m less interested in words than in actions and achievements. I’m also probably more sensitive to “communist” than most leftist or even centrist or apolitical Americans these days because I’ve lived and worked in late- and post- Soviet Eastern Europe.

Conrad, I also I enjoyed the tsunami poetry post. The stretch of Lake Ontario near where you live is also not far from where I once lived…

By the way, Paul Mattick’s article in this week’s Chronicle Review is pertinent to these discussions.

And it riles me up when people start ranting about a word they _think_ they know about. (Hearing North Americans clang on about democracy always gives me a good laugh.)

Do you know what communism really is? I noticed you sometimes put a capital C on it, as the marker for “what happened in the fSU” (whatever that means) and you sometimes don’t. You refer to the “Soviet Experiment” as well; what’s the connection between that and communism?

Todd – Words are defined by their uses, not by Webster and not by some self-authorized spokesperson or group. That means they’re defined in the echo chamber of human discourse (and practice).

“Do you know what communism really is?”

What does “really” mean? The Soviet Union claimed to be the world’s representative of Communism; its elite clanged that word into its citizens’ consciousness over and over for decades. We can throw their uses out the window and claim a new one, or a reinterpreted one, or an old one “purified” of its misuses, but you’ll have to fight pretty hard to establish your claims as reasonable. That’s my only point. Is it worth fighting for it? You decide.

“Words are defined by their uses, not by Webster and not by some self-authorized spokesperson or group.”

Wow! Got that one from 1984, did you? Quit trying to pretend you’re somehow above the fray with some faux populism, that you’re not policing the word “communism” from a somewhat more subjective position than mine or Jodi Dean’s.

How about going right to the source? Read Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme before you sound off.

“What does ‘really’ mean?”

Evidently not what Humpty Dumpty would like it to (not) mean . . . .

“The Soviet Union claimed to be the world’s representative of Communism”

So what? Just because the US claims to be the world’s representative of Democracy, do we have to believe that? Should we just claim that democracy is an old, tired, pre-Web idea that’s past its prime, that’s not worth purifying and focus on something new and different? (Would something pre-Modern be more your speed?)

“but you’ll have to fight pretty hard to establish your claims as reasonable.”

All of the verbiage above the comments section and your posts at Icite just for that patently obvious observation. Thanks ever so much; I see why you keep a blog.

Todd – You’re entitled to your opinion, as am I to mine. I happen to believe that social and political change are possible, and that the words we use in our efforts to bring it about ought to be carefully considered. I respect your right to try to convince me that ‘communism’ is a good word for the kind of change that’s possible and desirable. Your arguments here haven’t convinced me of that, and your tone makes me not want to pursue the topic any further with you. If you’d like to post a link to something written on the topic that you think I or other readers would be interested in following up on, you’re welcome to do that. But please keep the conversation civil.

Todd, if you can’t maintain a civil conversation for five minutes with someone you barely know, but who probably shares more views with you than not, do you really hope to build communism – probably the most intensively cooperative and collaborative task ever imagined?

Maybe that tells us why efforts have failed… “From each according to ability, to each according to need” is a difficult mandate to try to fulfill. (Kind of like Christianity that way.) Reading a little history wouldn’t hurt you…